Radical Writing Advice : Creativity Missing in Action?

*

I haven't come up with a great topic for this week. I've been thinking about it. And I think, in the midst of the contractor-insurance dance, the will-they-won't-they debate of who will show up but then doesn't, and certainly the hurry-up-do-it-now flurry of activity followed by periods of silence while they haggle over dotted t's and crossed i's. (Yes, I know I wrote that backwards. Thank you for noticing.) In this find the floor and contractor and we're coming to your house now, that my ability to think outside the box and be radical has diminished to just-write-it. Whatever it is. Just put down the words and call it good.

I had a story to tell, but even that seems mundane. Too boring to share. Or maybe too personal; no, not that. Too - well - undecided.

Maybe some of this is that I'm interpreting my first play of the season tomorrow. There has also been a lot of focus on that - time spent at the theater, with the script, with the CDs, thinking about it, figuring out creative uses of the target language. Practice.

I did manage to write something for last week's Literary Kitchen assignment. It wasn't as bad as I was afraid it would be. But the topic? Yes, the water leak, the contractors, the unplanned bathroom remodels.

And what's so "radical" about that? Nothing.

What I keep thinking, when the stress climbs and we have to do things in time we don't have is:
(a) as a good friend says, "it will end:" and
(b) someday this will make a good story.

Perhaps that is the message for this week: Even when things seem hard or impossible or that the schedule is too full, don't give up. This is all fodder for the next short story or novel or play. Someday, it will make a good story.

Keep in touch with your writer self even when it seems pointless or hard or boring. Nothing we as writers do is wasted or unrelated to writing.
*